Lent 3 • 19 March 2017

Exodus 17:1-7Romans 5:1-11John 4:5-42

Rev. Chris Udy

A few years ago,when we were reading the book of Ruth,we looked at a part of Israel’s historythat provides the contextfor the story of the woman at the well. *It’s very well knownthat Jewish people didn’t like Samaritans.There was animosity between them,as deep and dividingas anything we see today in the Middle East. the region around Jerusalem in the south,or from Galilee in the north,would take great pains,and go considerably out of their wayto avoid crossing Samaria in the middle.Samaritans were considered ‘unclean’.They didn’t observe the purity codes,so contact with themwas considered - by Jewish people -to be ‘contaminating’;the more intimate and personal the contactthe greater the contamination.So if a Samaritan shadowfell across a Jewish lunch,the lunch would be thrown away.Sharing anything that had touched Samaritan lips -a cup or a bowl, for instance -was simply and strictly forbidden,and as for marrying a Samaritan woman -for a Jewish man of Jesus’ generation,that couldn’t be imagined.

But in fact, it was in marriagethat the deep divisionsbetween Jews and Samaritans began,and all this animosity and discord and hatred has very little to dowith difference and strangeness.The roots of this terrible feudare about family, and faithfulness.

So we need a little history. *

David and Solomon united and expanded Israelinto its golden age,but when Solomon died around 920BC,the kingdom divided in two. *The northern kingdom of Israelwith its capital in the city of Samaria, lasted for 200 years,and ended with Assyrian occupation in 722BC.~Just over a century later, in 586BC,the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzarconquered Jerusalem and destroyed the temple,bringing an end to the southern kingdom of Judah.~Nebuchadnezzar had already forced 10,000 people;members of prominent, wealthy families,most of the artisans and craftsmen,and therefore almost all skilled and educated peopleinto exile in Babylon 10 years before.The final exile numbered about 1500,and they left Jerusalem and Judahalmost devoid of its leaders and teachers.

50 years later, in 538BC,~when the Persian Cyrus the Great conquered Babylon,and decreed that all Jews were permittedto return to their ancestral lands,some 40,000 Jews flooded backto Judah, and Samaria, and Galilee.*While they were in exiletheir faith and culturehad been fiercely maintained and defended,and what they most keenly grieved and longed forwas worship in a rebuilt Jerusalem Temple.So when one leader - Ezra - returned to Jerusalemwith gifts and treasures intended for the Temple,he was horrified and appalledto discover that many of thosewho had not been taken into Exilehad intermarried with Assyrians and Moabites,Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites,Jebusites, Ammonites,and all the other racial and religious groupingsthat have always been part of the mix in Palestine.They still worshipped Yahweh;they still kept Torah -the first 5 books of the Old Testament,although they had a slightly different version -but they were no longer committedto worship in the Temple,because for nearly 50 yearsthey’d had no Temple to worship in.

So when Ezra finally arrived in Jerusalem,he went to pray in the recently rebuilt Temple,and after his prayers he shamed and bulliedthose who heard himinto a tragic promise:he said that thosewho had married non-Jewish womenhad broken their covenant with Yahweh,and he forced them to vowthat they would divorce and send awayall the non-Jewish women they had marriedand all the children that had been born to them.In the south, in Jerusalem and Judahmany men complied with Ezra’s insistence -and we can only imaginethe heartbreak and hardship that caused;but the people of Samaria in the north refused.They said that there was no conflictbetween their covenant with God,and their covenants of marriage;they insisted that they were worshippingin the places their ancestorsAbraham and Isaac and Jacob had worshipped,and that was every bit as goodas worship in Jerusalem’s Temple;and they maintainedthat their understanding of the Law -their commitment to the covenant in Torah -didn’t need all the strictures and complicationsof the purity codes.

So when Jesus sat downbeside Jacob’s welland asked a Samaritan woman for a drink,all that history and heartbreakwas looming over them.By asking for a drink,Jesus was challenging divisionsthat had lasted for 500 years,and in their conversationhe pushed deeper and deeper,breaking throughthe 4 forms of prejudicethat have brought more miseryand oppression to human life than any other cause:racism, sexism, sectarianism and social class.

Like Nicodemus last week,the Samaritan woman’s conversation with Jesuswas often confusing and strange,but when it was finishedJesus had established a relationship with herthat was as liberating and sustainingas a spring of water within her,gushing up to eternal life.

It began with Jesus’ request: “Give me a drink” -and immediately the woman understoodthat something ground-breaking had happened:“How is it that you, a Jewish man,ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?”.She clearly knew the boundaries:Jews don’t speak to Samaritans;men don’t speak to women;good, respectable people don’t speak to outcasts;holy men don’t speak to heretics;and God doesn’t have conversationswith anyone but his own.Jesus was apparently ignoring covenants:traditions and understandings,cultural agreements, roles and relationships,that went back hundreds, if not thousands of years.Fathers taught their sons,and mothers their daughters,how to behave and believe,and what to think and to say.Sometimes those attitudes and behaviourswere written down and codified into law -but much more oftenthey were left informal, unwritten,sometimes even unspoken,but powerfully enforced through shaming,and social isolation, and violence.Those who could keep the rulesand accept their stationwere usually protected by their covenants;those who couldn’t, or didn’t,very quickly suffered reprisals.

It looks like the Samaritan womanknew what breaking covenants could bring.She was already disempoweredby being a woman, and a heretic Samaritan,but coming alone to the wellin the heat of the middle of the daymeant she was probably also outsidethe covenant of protectionthat women gave each otherby walking and working together.That suggests she’d been shunned,and that other women saw heras a threat to their security or social standing.It’s not absolutely clear,and there are symbolic layers in this conversation,but it looks like the Samaritan womanmay have been forced to takewhatever she could getto keep body and soul together.Jesus says she’s had five husbands,and the man she’s with nowshe’s not married to -so it looks like she’s entirely aloneand vulnerable to predators:a person without alliances or connections,with nobody she can rely onto come to her aid.

Covenants define relationships.They celebrate connections,set out expectations, secure rights,describe boundaries and prescribe sanctions.Contracts might do similar things,but they’re impersonal and formal,and they begin and end with the written form.Covenants are deeper -they’re made person to person.Because they’re personal,and because people change,covenants also change over time;they grow and adjustas do those who live within them.They’re open to renegotiation,they can be repaired and renewed -and it may even bethat a covenant, once made,is made forever.

So God makes covenants,not only with people, the Bible says,but with everything in creation.The oldest covenantis explained to Noah after the flood,and it affirms that creation has order and purpose.“While the earth remains,” God says,Seedtime and harvest, Cold and heat,winter and summer, and day and night,shall never cease.”So creation is orderly and lawful,and while order can bring securityit also brings consequencesto anyone or anythingthat breaks or ignores the rules.We can’t escape the covenant once made,and that can sometimes meanwe suffer its sanctions.

After Noah’s covenant comes Abraham’s:a promise to Abraham and his familythat they would be a great nation,with a land to call their own,and in return they were calledto trust and to worship Yahweh.

Next comes the covenantmade between God and Israel through Moses.Now the relationship is clearer;promises and punishmentsare clearly defined in the Law,and law itself begins to develop and grow.

Finally, at least for the woman at the well,Yahweh made a covenant with David,giving him and his descendantsthe anointed authorityto rule as Kings over Israelpromising him strength and victory -in return for David’s trust and faithfulness,and promising Israel that when their need was great,one of David’s line would redeem and save them.

Despite what others might think,the Samaritan woman still saw herselfas defined by these covenants -even if she was defined by her exclusion.The laws and rules and conventions of her culturewere still telling her who she was -but instead of giving her guidance and protection,now they had condemned herto loneliness and danger,and the covenants that should have been a blessing,had been turned into a curse.But one thing she held onto:the promise that, one day,someone of David’s line -a just and compassionate ruler - Messiah -would return to put her world to rights.

Amazingly, the woman at the welldoesn’t seem defeatedby the judgement and exclusion of her neighbours.She’s open and spirited and engaged.She’s the one who initiatesthe conversation with Jesus,and she’s the one who leads it from theme to theme.She obviously understands her heritage and tradition,and she describes and defends what she believeswith humour and intelligence and pride.And in response, from Jesus,she receives open, respectful, thoughtful conversation;she isn’t dismissed or exploited or devalued,but she’s treated as a personfully worthy of his serious, careful attention.

Finally, the Samaritan woman at the welldraws the conversation to a close.“I know that Messiah is coming”, she says,and “when he comes,he will proclaim all things to us”.It sounds like she’s looking and hoping for someonein whom even Samaritans and Jewsmight find reconciliation and redemption,someone in whomthe covenant with Godwould bring healing and forgiveness,not division and conflict and shame.So when Jesus replies“I am he, the one who is speaking to you,”the Samaritan womantrusts him immediately -and, leaving her water jar behind,she ran back to the citycalling her neighbours come and seethe man who knew everything about her,and yet gave her respect,and treated her with honour.

We can’t run awayfrom the covenants that define us.We will always be people with history,and when we make relationships,choose sides, or form alliances,the effects of those decisions stay with us.But thankfully we, like the woman at the well,have also been included and embracedin a new covenant with Godestablished in and through the Messiah, Jesus.

This, like all the others,is a covenant for ever -a covenant we can’t and won’t escape -but thankfully again, this is a covenant of grace;an invitation to healing and redemption,and a promise of justice and peace.

This is a covenant, and a promise,not only for Abraham’s family,or only for men,or only for saintly people of the right class -it’s for everyone,and it offers grace - forgiveness and protection -to everyone who wants to be included.

All it requires of us in returnis trust -trust in the God we have met in Jesus;trust in his promise of love and grace,and trust that in his spirit,and in the truth he embodies and lives,we will find resources for life:faith and hope and love,welling up within uslike a spring of living water,sustaining us into eternal life.